


Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

by Elisif



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisif/pseuds/Elisif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andromache lives another fifty years and writes the Iliad</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

_Let me tell you what I wish I’d known,_

_When I was young and dreamed of glory,_

_You have no control,_

_Who lives, who dies who tells your story._

Sing, oh goddess, of the wrath of Achilles. I lived, Hector. Neoptolemus stifled, but he never crushed me. Let it be known, I, Andromache lived.

You see, on ship to Epirus, there was a storm and the swell threw Neoptolemus’ sea-chest across the floor, spilled its contents wide open amid the sacks of flour and amphorae. They were things of yours in it he had taken, your jewels, your books. I only wanted a piece of you, some little thing left of our world to have and to hold. But Neoptolemus saw my damp eyes and had the chest repacked and taken away from me. But Neoptelemus never saw that a stylus and a tablet had rolled beneath the bed. I don’t know if they were ever even really yours, Hector, but I took them. I held them close, and that night, alone and grieving on the churning sea, for the first time I began to write. Of such small moments are the ages measured.

Oh I was unpolished! Those first verses were fit only for kindling. I hid them beneath my mattress when the storm ended so Neoptolemus would never know. I began to tell all their stories; kind Hecuba, all your brothers, taken too soon, my dear sisters in law, your good father may he rest among heroes. Astyanax, our beautiful boy who never grew old. I used to lie awake at night, change little bits of verses while looking across the sea towards home. Hidden between linens, concealed on scraps behind wax tablets and sometimes never written down at all. I never told a soul. The monster who killed our son, he kept me on a gilded tether to show off to his courtiers; the captured princess who was once a queen, demure, to look upon, spinning upon a bench in the palace garden like a good captive wife. But I spited those courtiers; whenever I looked upon them, I was thinking of you, Hector. I was writing stories about you, about us, perfecting them, though I knew it not at the time, for the ages.

_Every other hero’s story gets told, every other hero gets to grow old._

I learned to write by oil-light while Neoptolemus was at war; I studied the harp, I read every book I could find. I learned to perform by reciting our stories to the olive trees in the palace garden. You told me once that olive-trees can live a thousand summers and if you listen, tell you about just as many.

_But when you’re gone, who remembers your name?_

_Who keeps your flame, who tells your story…_

My little scraps of poems all burned with Epirus when Helenus sacked that city. I never saw my – second- stranger of a son again. But Helenus was kind; he cared for me as a husband should, Hector. I learned to love him. He let me tell stories to our children— who grew up, Hector, who lived, who are still with me now. He let me speak of you and all the others. I did not need to hide my poems any longer, and for decades I rarely thought of them. He let me bring survivors to our hearth and learn the things they too remembered. Sometimes, by candlelight, I wrote them down.

_I stopped wasting time on tears, I live another fifty years._

_I interview every soldier who fought by your side…_

I am old, Hector. I l have lived a life. When our time was up, I buried Helenus with soldier sons and daughters nursing their own babes by my side; the day is long-past when my fingers grew too stiff to spin and I laid down my distaff forever. What ever became of me, of us! But on that day, those women had worked beside for decades, they asked me something.

“Tell us a tale, Andromache,” they said. “Tell us a story for the ages. Recite for us, Andromache of Troy.”

_“Sing, oh goddess of the wrath of Achilles…”_

_I put myself back in the narrative…_

Every night, my spinning circle begged for more; every night I recounted another verse of the poems I had started writing decades ago on ship to Epirus, in Neoptelemus’ garden, remembering you. They wept, they laughed, they felt; they began to bring their sisters and their daughters to weave alongside me whenever I spoke of Troy. By the time I reached the tale’s ending- though I know now, it was never truly the end, not really— by then, there were hundreds of them. And when I finished, they begged to hear it all over again for the newcomers they had dragged along with them.

Pergamus- dear Pergamus my son, he reminds me so much of you sometimes! He found scribes for my ailing fingers, had my weaving-song copied down. At my bequest, he gave it to a circle of poets in the city under a man’s name. Do you remember Homer, the blind, lumbering monster in that story Astyanax begged to hear from you every single night until you dreaded to tell it? Well, I told it to Pergamus too when he was young too and it became a joke between us, to say “Homer” whenever a name was asked for. So of course he wrote “Homer” upon my poems and did not tell me until apparently the all scholars in Athens were begging to know who this Homer who could write so beautifully was! They call it the Iliad. I expect that was Pergamus’ doing too, but I do not know. I am old and tired Hector. But they remember you now. They remember all of us. They know your name, all our names and across the lands, they beg to hear them sung of.

Sing, oh goddess of the wrath of Achilles.

_Who lives, who dies, who tells your story…_


End file.
